Next Move from Central America

I am pondering on some ideas about where I will make my next jump from Central America. I am thinking about staying in this region for a couple more months to visit El Salvador, Belize, travel in Guatemala, and then exit from Mexico.

But exit to where? This is the question.

Central America is easy to access to and from the United States. There are very cheap flights from NYC and Miami. But to get to other regions from here is a little difficult. Even many flights from Central to South America are first routed through Miami.

It is looking like I can go in three directions:

1. Fly to JFK for cheap from Mexico, do another 10 days in the USA to visit family and my sister’s new child, then return to NYC to fly to another region of the world. Depending on price I may London, Frankfurt or Istanbul and travel on from there. Or maybe Cairo.

2. Go east through the Carribean. It would be great to travel in Cuba right now, but I think the rest of the region is best traveled by boat.

3. Go south to South America. I love South America, but I harbor doubts to if I am being called back there at this time. When I first began traveling I made three journeys in a row to South America. I love this continent, but the world is large and there are many places that I have not yet traveled to.

So these are looking like my options. The first is looking like the best. My birthday is in May as well, so it would be nice to be back with my family and eat carrot cake. If I were to do this, I could access the JFK hub and go to London, Frankfurt, Cairo, Tokyo, or Istanbul. I would then be able to travel on from these destinations. I have an intuition that is rising up in me that is now only a whisper, but I think that its voice will grow louder and louder very soon:

A Vagabond Journey Around the World.

To re-test Franck’s hypothesis, travel a similar route, and write about the world through the lens of how it was a century ago.

(Shh! . . . this is still yet only a whisper hehehe.)

The travel map of the world goes from hub to hub and gateway to gateway. A hub is a major city that has good air connections with the world – the places that flights generally connect through. A gateway is a city that has easy access throughout a region. To travel efficiently I know that I need to know where these hubs and gateways are and how to use them to their fullest advantage.

World hubs are places that you can easily get to any other hub from in the world. In my opinion they are: NYC, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Cairo, Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore, Shanghai, Delhi, and maybe a couple others. My favorite hubs as of late have been JFK, Heathrow (although it is an airport that I do not like at all), Bangkok, and, of course, Shanghai. I have often found myself in a perpetual cycle between these points on the map. For some good information on how to connect these points on the map and use travel hubs to their fullest go to Andy’s page of Around the World Air Travel. There is no reason for me to write the same information twice.

I find myself thinking a lot about these travel hubs. These cities are the Songlines, the signpost by which I navigate this world. Hubs are essentially cross roads for the global traveler: when you arrive at one, you have many options on where to go next. They are like the drain of a sink with a leaky faucet: the water drops fall down in a single path upon the drain and then quickly splatter out in many different directions. I am going to have to seek out a hub very soon. So what will it be: NYC? Tokyo? London? Istanbul? Follow Franck’s guiding path?

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Wade Shepard is the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. He has been moving through the world since 1999, traveling to 55 countries. He is the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China, which is a first hand, experiential account of China’s urbanization drive which has created hundreds of completely new cities. Wade Shepard has written 2860 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

About

Wade Shepard is a traveling writer who has been moving through the world for the past 16 years, going to over 55 countries. He is the author of Ghost Cities of China, and his articles have appeared in the South China Morning Post, Reuters, CityMetric, among many other publications. This is his personal blog where he collects the stories, anecdotes, and observations from his travels that don’t fit in anywhere else.

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